Cart abandonment is a problem for e-commerce sites.
In fact, about 70% of users on average abandon their carts for a myriad of reasons.
Now, as an online store owner, it’s easy to lose your mind and claim that the sky is falling. However, this will not solve the problem at hand. Instead, you need to find a solution and prevent more people from leaving without making purchases.
One possible cause of cart abandonment is a cluttered and disorganized checkout process.
Does your current checkout process require users to enter their billing information more than once? Do you have a variety of payment options available?
Whatever the case may be, it’s a problem worth investigating. Go through your checkout process and see where your customers are closing. The payment process may need to be reworked to increase conversion rates.
Among the different online checkout platforms, Samcart and Clickfunnels could be the products that can help you achieve this.
In this review, learn what Samcart and Clickfunnels can do and what their differences are. In the end, you will learn how you can stop cart abandonment through a conversion-focused checkout system.
What is SamCart?
First, let’s review what Samcart is.
In short, Samcart is an online platform that allows business owners to create optimized shopping carts and checkout processes to help improve conversions and sales and increase revenue.
They claim… the average Samcart seller earns up to 5x more than the average seller on other platforms.
With checkout pages being a major hurdle when it comes to online sales, Samcart is designed to take the hassle out of creating a professional, optimized checkout page in minutes.
Features of SamCart
1. UpSells with one click
In e-commerce, upsells are a key part of optimizing the sales funnel and creating additional revenue by simply offering the customer an additional product or service at checkout.
This can be something of a higher or lower value. However, the beauty lies in the ability to quickly create these upsells and also track the success rate of each upsell so you can refine your speech.
2. Payment pages
Checkout pages are the most crucial element of e-commerce stores and online sales. They can literally make or break your business and should be treated accordingly.
The checkout pages offered by Samcart have been shown to increase sales from existing website traffic. This is why I previously stated that you could get your money back on a monthly plan in a matter of days.
Once you’ve found a design you like, you can take advantage of the Sandbox feature, which allows you to fully test the checkout and cart before going live.
This is a great feature that is especially useful when running a paid traffic or email marketing campaign, as a broken checkout page could lead to a very costly mistake.
You have an insane amount of control over your Samcart checkout pages. Nothing like this is offered with competing products, at least not with the optimization efforts that went into making their pages some of the best designed and best-converting pages you will find.
3. A/B split test
Once you have an established business and are making sales, split testing and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is key to growing your business and can easily be one of the cheapest and fastest ways to increase revenue and return rates conversion.
Samcart’s A / B testing feature allows you to easily identify your most profitable products/services and upsells and give them the attention they deserve.
From this, you can learn key lessons that can be carried over to other pages and offers, further growing your business.
4. Model library
The Samcart template library gives you access to more than 18 pre-designed checkout carts and landing pages that let you take advantage of their easy-to-use generator to get you set up in no time.
No more problems with code or attempts to integrate third-party apps and services, these templates work right out of the box and were designed by marketers and designers with conversion optimization in mind.
5. Payment options
One of the first things you do when setting up your shopping cart software is integrating with your favorite payment processor.
Samcart offers the option to use PayPal or Stripe, which is a little bit surprising as I was expecting more options… however, as they are the two most used options, it fits most needs. Also, there is no option for those of you who wish to accept cryptocurrency or smartphone transactions such as Apple or Android Pay, etc.
6. Payment plans
Payment plans are another great feature that allows you to offer your customers/clients the option to pay for purchases over a period of time.
This is useful for high-end products and services, where the barrier to entry for many potential customers is price and affordability.
By offering a “drop checkout” option, you will increase conversions and get more customers and sales as a result.
You can offer the customer the option to pay:
- One time
- Weekly recurring
- Monthly recurring
- Recurring quarterly
- Recurring annual
- Recurring days for customers
It is this flexibility that gives Samcart the edge over many other platforms, in my opinion.
7. Coupons and trial offers
Samcart says 65% of shoppers say coupon availability has finalized their purchase decision. I’m sure you can see this is HUGE.
By taking advantage of Samcart’s coupon functionality, you can offer discounts at any rate you choose to attract shoppers who are on the fence. As of April 19th, you can now send prospects to a page with a pre-applied coupon, which for those of you who do email marketing is an excellent feature to have.
It also works with trial offers, where customers can take advantage of both free and paid offers, which work really well for service-based businesses and online courses.
8. Recurring sales and subscriptions
Recurring revenue is the backbone of many successful e-commerce businesses. Incorporating this elusive recurring element into your business is a must to get you away from the month-to-month sales rollercoaster.
MRR or monthly recurring revenue allows you to rest easy knowing that you have a guaranteed income coming in every month.
With Samcart, you can manage multiple products and recurring subscription levels, making the MRR challenge a thing of the past.
9. App integrations
Samcart can integrate seamlessly with a multitude of other third-party apps that you as an entrepreneur are likely to currently use or have at least stumbled upon on your journey.
For example, you can link your checkout process to apps like Zapier to automate tasks once an order has been placed or a cart has been abandoned, for example.
Infusionsoft to create funnels and move customers and prospects through your funnel. There are also many email marketing tools you can link to, such as Aweber, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, and ConvertKit, to name a few.
If you run a membership website, Samcart also integrates with a variety of popular software in this area, such as WishList Member, Kajabi, and MemberMouse.
The ability to integrate Samcart with one or more other external applications using their integration engine was one of the key factors that made me choose this tool for my new business.
10. Support and knowledgebase
With both paid plans (monthly or yearly), you will receive priority support over other members such as trial users etc.
This means help and support are just a click away, which means you get a solution to your problem on time, allowing you to continue running and growing your business.
Additionally, Samcart has a live chat option available from anywhere within the dashboard, making help (from a real person) just a click away.
Do you need help and support? You have it, with Samcarts’ extensive knowledge base.
As a member of the Pro plan, you get priority support when you need it, and with their Premium plan, you have a dedicated training person who is there to hold your hand throughout the entire process if you need it.
Most of us, however, might be just as happy to search and read from their wealth of articles covering all aspects of using their software, from setup to app integration, product creation and payment options.
What I liked about their knowledge base articles was that many of them included a video guide, which really helps you go through the process step by step. I like to pause the video while taking the required action before continuing.
11. Reporting system
One of the key aspects of any checkout system for me is reporting. The quality of a shopping cart SaaS product can be assessed directly by the reporting system.
There is nothing about this reporting system that I don’t like. It’s fast, it delivers the numbers I want to see, and it’s extremely flexible and allows me to analyze my business performance at a glance.
12. Affiliate program
There is no faster way to increase sales than to have a team of people promoting your products and sending traffic to your optimized Samcart pages. With the Premium plan, you can integrate a ready-made affiliate platform where bloggers and businesses can sign up and create their own custom affiliate tracking links.
That’s exactly how Amazon has grown so big… if it’s good enough for Jeff Bezos, it’s good enough for me!
13. Subscription savings
With their Premium plan, you have access to the Subscription Savings (reminder process), which takes the hassle out of the constant drag-and-drop of chasing payments, renewing subscriptions, and handling bounced or missed payments.
A recent study shows that 68% of customers will abandon their cart, which is why the Subscription Saver is designed to help prevent cart abandonment, automate email notifications, notify customers when a payment fails or the details of the payment must be renewed, etc.
14. Pixel monitoring
Many of us will use Facebook as part of our online sales process, perhaps using paid traffic to send potential customers to a landing page. With Samcart, you can pass detailed customer and order data to third-party tracking tools like Facebook to help build customer audiences and similar profiles.
Who is SamCart for?
If you have something to sell online, Samcart is for you. From physical goods to digital products to courses, seminars and events.
The ease of setup makes Samcart suitable for both beginners and small and medium-sized businesses who want to simplify the payment process, increase conversions, and boost revenues.
If you offer a range of products, this web-based tool will allow you to upsell and cross-sell your entire product range, moving customers into new funnels and optimizing their experience right from the start.
SamCart Pricing
A question many of us have when choosing software to grow our business is: Is Samcart worth the price?
Since they’ve ditched their original $19 / month Basic plan and replaced it with a free trial option (which in my opinion, is a must-try) and two simple paid plans, Samcart is not only an affordable option, but it gives you more than enough features to easily recover 5x or more the subscription price in a few days.
When it comes to pricing options, Samcart has three different plans:
- Free trial (14 days)
- Pro ($ 99 per month)
- Premium ($ 199 per month)
1. Free trial
My recommended approach if you’re still unsure about Samcart and if it’s the right solution for you is to take advantage of their 14-day free trial.
With this, you can access all the great features that Samcart offers for two weeks, put it to the test and see how it works, all before you spend a dime.
Plus, all plans include the risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee… so you have nothing to lose by taking the trial or one of the plans below for a spin.
2. Pro plan
The Pro plan costs $99 per month or you can save 25% with the yearly plan, which would bring the price to $888 / year or $74 per month.
The Pro plan includes:
- 18+ Payment Templates: Choose from over 18 templates to speed up your payment page design and creation.
- Unlimited Products – Sell/offer as many products or services as you need, without limits.
- Integrated Credit Card Processing – Use Stripe and PayPal to automate credit card processing and reduce fees.
- One-time payments, subscriptions, trials, and plans – advanced options to attract buyers and get them accepted.
- Advanced reporting: Understand the metrics and numbers that are driving your business forward.
- Cart Abandonment: View abandoned carts and contact potential customers to save the sale.
- Webhooks – Integrate with your favorite apps to make your workflow smooth.
- 1-Click Upsells: Offer an upgrade or option to purchase an additional product/service.
- A / B split test: Compare product and payment pages, upsells, and more.
- Priority support: fast and responsive support from qualified professionals.
3. Premium plan
The Premium plan is priced at $199 / month (1,788 / year or $149 / month with the annual subscription).
All the features of the Pro plan are included along with some additional extras:
- Subscription Savings – Automated solution for retaining subscribers, changing payment details, and more.
- The Affiliate Center: Ask others to promote your products or services by integrating an affiliate center.
- Dedicated Training and Support – Premium members receive a dedicated training area and first-class support when they need it.
What we like about SamCart
- No setup fees: Unlike other platforms, Samcart doesn’t charge setup fees to get started.
- 14 Day Free Trial (Click Here) – Take advantage of this generous offer here to see if it’s right for you.
- Superfast setup: You can create a customized and optimized checkout page in less than 3 minutes
- Free SSL Certificate: Give your customers the security of continuing with a transaction on secure HTTPS servers
- Single Page Product and Checkout – Reduce cart abandonments due to lengthy checkout processes
- A / B testing: Make changes to your product/checkout page and upsells and see how they perform
What we don’t like about SamCart
- Limited support for payment processors (only Stripe and PayPal are offered)
- No cryptocurrency or Apple Pay features
- I would prefer a 30-day free trial, rather than just the 14 days offered.
In summary, I would consider Samcart to be a solid SaaS platform and one of, if not THE easiest shopping cart solution for small business owners.
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels is Samcart’s biggest competitor. With their wide range of features, it’s not hard to see why. ClickFunnels is a comprehensive marketing tool that walks you through the entire process – from the landing page builder to the smart shopping cart features.
Clickfunnels is a tool that allows you to create high converting sales funnels with the simplicity and effectiveness that no other platform allows you to do. It is one of the most powerful, complete, and functional funnel builders that have ever been created. Due to its effective validity, it is also the most promoted tool by web marketers from all over the world.
Promoting this tool rewards its affiliates with great recurring commissions. This tool simplifies the marketing processes useful for promoting/selling services, events or products online.
The ClickFunnels platform offers several very simple tools to use to create high-converting funnels. It also gives you the ability to upload pre-structured sales journeys that have already been tested and designed to convert.
What are the Best Parts of ClickFunnels?
1. Funnel Pattern Templates
If you’ve never created a sales funnel before, ClickFunnels has you covered.
Funnel types fall into three main categories: lead capture funnels, sales page funnels, and event funnels. But there are also other special funnels like Subscription funnels that you can create.
They include simple funnels like the Squeeze Page Funnel which collects a visitor’s email address and sends them to a thank you page upon signing up.
Or to more sophisticated sales funnels like the 2-Step TripWire Funnel that sells a low-cost front-end product (your tripwire) and then augments them to your more expensive products using order form bumps and upsells. Or one-click down sells.
Additionally, each type of funnel has its own set of free templates and paid templates. So even if you don’t have any design skills, your funnel pages will all have a consistent and professional design.
Here’s a high-level overview of how to create your first sales funnel:
- Choose a type of funnel.
- Select a model.
- Customize each page to fit your business.
- Add your products and make sure all your email and payment integrations are set up.
- Set up a domain name for your new funnel.
- Save your funnel.
Your sales funnel is now live, and you can start sending traffic to it.
2. Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels gives you a great place to start with its funnel and page templates, the ClickFunnels editor is where you can really make every page of your funnel your own.
Pages in ClickFunnels are structured using sections that can have any number of rows and columns. You can then use the mouse to drag the items and place them wherever you want.
While it’s not as flexible as Instapage’s landing page editor, it’s still very good and can be used to make just about any project you want.
What I like is that the editor is very intuitive to use.
Selecting components on the page and moving them wherever you want is very simple.
Text elements can be edited inline and changing the properties of any element can be done via the pop-up sidebar.
And unlike other editors out there, everything is organized logically. You don’t spend a lot of time hunting for what you want to do.
The important thing is that no coding is required. So, you don’t have to waste time learning HTML or CSS or technical stuff like that.
3. Nice Selection of Page Elements
Elements (or widgets) are essential in giving you the flexibility to design the exact pages you want, and ClickFunnels gives you a wide variety of them to use.
The basic elements include title, image, text, button, input forms and video widgets. These are the building blocks for any landing page created in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes a number of advanced elements such as:
- SMS Sign-up
- investigations
- Price tables
- Status indicators
- Facebook Comments
- FAQ Blocks
- Countdown timer
- Custom HTML
Additionally, there are specialized elements such as sign-up elements for sign-up pages and orders and shipping form elements for order pages.
Each element can be easily customized in the sidebar of the editor. With most elements, you can change common properties such as background colors, margins, fonts, and alignment.
So, there are element-specific properties such as the image URL for the Image element or the button text.
4. The ClickFunnels Affiliate Program is great
I do not doubt that ClickFunnels has the best and most legitimate affiliate marketing program you can be a part of.
First the basics:
The ClickFunnels Affiliate Program pays 40% recurring commissions for every referral you make, and you can win great prizes like $ 500 to your dream car once you hit 100 active referrals.
They also offer 5% 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program itself.
You also earn 40% commissions by promoting any product in the ClickFunnel ecosystem including DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets, or even Software Secrets books.
And thanks to ClickFunnel’s sticky cookie, you’ll also earn commissions on any upsells your referrals purchase while also going through their specific funnels.
But that is not all:
ClickFunnels also has another great feature for affiliates called the sharing funnel.
In the Settings tab of any of your funnels, you can grab your sharing funnel URL.
When someone visits this URL, they will be able to add this funnel directly to their account if they are an existing ClickFunnels member. If they’re not a member yet, they can sign up for ClickFunnel’s free 14-day trial and then add your funnel to their account.
What’s really great is that this sharing URL doubles as an affiliate link, and you will get a recurring commission if this new user ends up staying.
There are many ways to build ClickFunnels affiliate commissions by creating shared funnels. One of my favorites is the Affiliate Business in a Box method which you can learn more about in my Udimi case study.
You can also check out my ClickFunnels affiliate guide for more ideas on how to make money with shared funnels.
What we don’t like about ClickFunnels
1. Why is adding a funnel so slow?
Once you have chosen the type and model of the funnel, you need to add it to your account.
For some reason, this process seems to take around 8-10 seconds each time.
While I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, it doesn’t make sense to me because it would take so long. It’s a little annoying, even if it’s just a minor inconvenience.
2. Limits to the funnels you can create and to the number of visitors
ClickFunnels limits you to 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors on their cheapest plan. I’m not really a fan of software products that restrict you in this way.
If you’re just building sales funnels for yourself, these boundaries are probably okay.
But you might be more bothered by these limitations if you’re doing customer work, building funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnel as an affiliate using shared funnels.
You will need to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you want to create unlimited funnels.
3. Fairly High learning curve
The scope of what ClickFunnels can do is pretty broad, and I can certainly see it intimidating some.
That’s why ClickFunnels has put a lot of work into the onboarding process to facilitate access to the software. The ClickFunnels interface is pretty well designed for the most part, and once you’ve created a few funnels yourself, the whole process gets easier over time.
ClickFunnels Pricing Plans
Over time, ClickFunnels has evolved its pricing plans. They originally had three different pricing tiers but have since consolidated into two separate plans.
Currently, the cheapest ClickFunnels plan costs $97 per month. In this plan, you have access to all funnel creation tools, but you are limited to creating 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors. You also don’t have access to Actionetics, their built-in email service provider, and Backpack, which allows you to create your affiliate program.
To access it, you need to follow the Etison Suite plan. It includes everything, plus you get unlimited funnels, pages, and visitors. However, this will cost you $297 per month.
As far as I know, there are no ClickFunnels coupon codes available.
However, you can purchase Funnel Builder Secrets for $2,997 which gives you 12 months of Etison Suite for free plus some additional bonuses. This brings the cost to $249.75 per month.
ClickFunnels makes it easy for you to demonstrate their service with the 14-day free trial. It is not limited in any way that allows you to fully test the software before fully committing.
If $97 or $297 a month seems like too much of a commitment for your current budget, there’s also a semi-secret, unspoken sharing funnel plan that you can also access for just $19 a month. With this plan, you can only create three funnels and ten pages, but it’s a great way to test ClickFunnels on a budget.
The only way to access the Share Funnel plan is by signing up for the trial version of ClickFunnels through someone’s share funnel link like this One Funnel Away Challenge shares funnel link.
After entering your free trial email and password, you will need to select the “Limited shared funnels only” checkbox to access the Share Funnel plan.
How does ClickFunnels compare to Samcart?
Samcart is a product that allows users to create beautiful, high-converting checkout pages, which has a lot in common with ClickFunnels.
Samcart is geared towards installation and quick sales. It supports Stripe and Paypal and comes with 17 different checkout page templates that you can customize. As the payment gateways are limited, vendors looking for more processors may need to look for other software.
In terms of flexibility, there is no comparison between ClickFunnel’s drag and drop editor and Samcart’s.
ClickFunnels is infinitely more powerful as you can design any payment page you can dream of. Samcart only allows some basic customizations for its predefined templates.
Samcart allows you to add order bumps, upsells and down sells as ClickFunnels does. You can also easily create coupons for your products – another great way to increase conversions.
However, what Samcart lacks is the ability to acquire leads and build complete sales funnels. If you are a start-up or are on a tight budget, Clickfunnles is not the tool for you.
Final thoughts
Which software you choose depends on your needs and the amount of work you are willing to invest in your business.
While many of you sell standalone products, are you willing to put in the effort to create a high-converting sales funnel?
If not, ClickFunnels may be overkill for you. You can collect leads or sell your front-end product cheaper (and with success) by using alternative services like Samcart.
However, if increasing the lifetime value of your customers is important to you and you have the money to spend, then I recommend you give ClickFunnels a try.
